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<title>The Ghost Of Laughter On Your Lips by SilverHounds</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23747455">The Ghost Of Laughter On Your Lips</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverHounds/pseuds/SilverHounds'>SilverHounds</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age II</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Introspection, Mage Hawke (Dragon Age), Purple Hawke (Dragon Age)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 15:48:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>433</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23747455</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverHounds/pseuds/SilverHounds</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She laughs, and he wonders why; at first he assumes she is mocking. But slowly, that laughter becomes warm, becomes something solid to hold onto in a world in which Fenris doesn’t dare to trust the people around him. And Hawke..Hawke’s just trying to get him to laugh with her.</p><p>Or: a short character study.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Fenris/Female Hawke, Fenris/Hawke (Dragon Age)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Ghost Of Laughter On Your Lips</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Labels weigh at her throat, their every title an accusation, their every name another attempt to confine one who was made from a union crafted by rebellious love. <em>Mage </em>is the obvious insult. <em>Mage </em>carries a thousand implications and it matters not how their tongue curls around the syllables because she knows every word they won’t dare to utter in daylight. <em>Monster, monstrosity, danger, waste of life, cursed woman—</em>she knows them all. <em>Champion </em>is somehow more unforgiving still. Exalt her, whisper her name with reverence and awe and it burns equal to <em>mage </em>because expectations are harder to escape than hate. Now she is cut with their disappointment, starved with their starvation. She is a wisp who belongs nowhere except to those she serves, constant laughter on her lips so as to cover the fear that perhaps..perhaps this famed Champion of Kirkwallwill not make a difference. </p><p>He is less than ghost, less than some simple wisp. He exists where existence fails to be realized, where the belief and guarantee of personhood is an unbroken promise never promised. He haunts places where he cannot be seen beneath the shadow of his master. Every name stutters and leaves his grasp when he hears an order, but—but they are not absent; they’re maddening murmurs, old recollections from a life lived by another person entirely, a boy. A reality far separated from his own. And when he flees his chains, he finds himself not slave, but not free. The wisp greets him, mirth in her eyes and decorating her face, with little else but meaninglessness to offer him. And yet he has the impression she is not laughing at<em> him</em>, but at <em>life. </em></p><p>How odd then that he finds such suspect depth in her laughter. He is not certain when he first begins following that wisp, or when he first laughs alongside her, or when his chest first clenches at the smirk she repeats every day and night; all he knows is the sensation of freedom he’s found with this wisp.</p><p>And she, she is still as faint as ever, still oddly delicate and unremarkable and as fleeting as wind on the coasts of Kirkwall’s anchorage; but she’s warmed, too, by the body in her bed and lips on hers and how completely and totally nameless she is. To him, she has but one name. One greater than lover, than companion, than Hawke. To him, she’s <em>friend.</em></p><p>And they are finally enough. For love, for contentment, for two people trying desperately to find themselves without losing themselves..it is enough. <em>They </em>are enough.</p>
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